Composer, electronic musician, improviser and field recordist Tullis Rennie returns with Safe Operating Space, a vivid hybrid of club music and free improvisation. Emerging from an entirely improvised recording session alongside Preetha Narayanan (violin), Tara Franks(‘cello), Cath Roberts (baritone sax), and Dee Byrne (alto sax), the album explores new aspects of Rennie’s practice and reflects on themes such as global heating, AI-generated deepfakes, family life, and Kate Bush.
“This music is inspired by the beautifully human endeavour of trying to grab hold of unrepeatable moments”, Rennie explains. “A second of magic within a spontaneous musical improvisation, or during a jungle tune breakdown on the dance floor of an intimate club space. When a light hits something and you freeze, wanting to make it last an age… but the reason moments like these are so alluring is precisely because they’re so fleeting.”
Safe Operating Space follows 2022’s Fixed Freedoms, released on Matthew Herbert’s Accidental Jr imprint as part of their Room 2 series dedicated to electronic music outside the main thoroughfare of club tracks. Rennie says “I knew that I didn’t want to completely repeat the ways in which I made Fixed Freedoms (combining on-the-fly field recordings and impro-vised analogue electronics as personal, impromptu diaries), but nor did I want to throw out a productive way of working. Replacing field recordings with improvising musicians seemed a natural next step in expanding and augmenting the ways in which spontaneity is heard and explored, while also representing a major progression in my practice – expanding my sonic palette and forcing me to think more deeply about the reasons why one would choose to preserve and re-present a sound.”
Frise Lumière is a personal project by artist, musician and composer, Ludovic Gerst. Exploring and perfecting the bass instrument, his debut album, Bisou Genou, was released in 2021. His new album, Ambo, is released this October. It is a three-year research into prepared bass explorations, using broomsticks, mallets and drumsticks.
Along with household objects, toys and her cello, you will step into a very intimate sound-world of improvised orchestral ecosystems of babbling sounds. Scottish-based Semay Wu has made two solo releases since 2022, seeing a rise in visibility. Raspberry Hotel in 2022, and Sharmanka in 2023. Semay is releasing a new album also in October, called Unsteady Stones.
